Jon Riccio


Dorothy Zbornak with a Haibun by Igor Stravinsky

I’m sorry for the time I placed a wadded
Band-Aid under the hood of my mother’s car,
certain the adhesive, a ball among wires
and windshield fluid, would cause vehicular
combustion. My third-grade knowledge
of engineering needed me to warn her
before she returned to the boss we still conspire
to cyclone with riot act should we see him
in public. Now that one grocery chain’s closed
odds are we’ll encounter, browsing apricots.

If her car exploded, I’d know why.
Used bandages, any member of the medical
waste family, jumpstarting OCD.

Karma or prospect of automobile flambé,
I still heed magical thinking, though I’m not
as governed by my fear of spontaneous STD
if I see a particular Golden Girls rerun over
allotted limit—the one where Dorothy’s
ex Stanley Zbornak sleeps with her sister
during a hurricane. OCD stipulated that
I had two more passes until the accidental
sight of a dunderheaded novelty salesman
bedding Dorothy’s last sibling (her brother
died the season before) summoned
chlamydia from the urethral plane.
Disorder, a mechanic who can’t
fix bottlenecked laugh track.

                               ***
My friend calls me chucklehead
over his one cheeseburger of the year.
We are tied for gray neck hairs.
With compliments I mean well
yet they fall like salt loosely capped.
I loved my dachshund Oscar (1989-2005).
Thought it a tribute when I told someone
in college—the person you support
by moving a bedpost two miles on foot
despite 12:30 in the morning—
her chewing of a waffle cone
reminded me of his supper-noises,
support connoting love or pylons.

My most authentic is early morning
airport rides. Magical thinking means
I travel only after purchasing a postcard
of the state animal, or photo falsity that
‘portrays’ the capital city’s nightlife.
This most-authentic—a virtuoso
at vulnerability pennywhistle—gums
the Mississippisphere so I save it
for an Oregon pen pal. My alter ego,
a Corvallis concert violinist whose
backyard thrives in figs. Pacific-Jon has
no phobias, knows bath soaps rhapsodize.

His exercises include fingered octaves,
the epitome of left-hand coordination
where you break sonic tradition
produced by the double-stopped
pinkie/index, recasting the sound
with finger pairs one and three,
two and four. The result, a stronger
tone facing pitfalls of illness sincerity
technique. Nailbeds enunciate the rest.

                               ***
A doctor leant me his book on complex PTSD,
offered to wipe it off with sanitizer. I took it
as is which surprised him. Had no problem
de-escalating yesterday’s thousand-filled
auditorium. I sit in bleachers rarely
but when my friend of seven years
graduated, I downplayed phobia from
jumbotron to hummingbird,
the Band-Aid with blood
requiring suspension
of disease-belief.

                               ***
Bea Arthur, a sonic tradition.
If I sound like a broken gargoyle
a cocoon has begun in the portico of my rib.

I straighten my hair, defuse at the wave
of a Maude wand. When I thought my follicles
contaminated, I basted my head with mouthwash,
neck like a commercial against gingivitis.

My brother and sister’s health problems,
heart- and knee-related. One can’t
run, the other forgoes caffeine.
Neither’s christened a towel rack
the way I champagne a ship with bleach.

                               ***
Recovery from my lowest?

                               ***
Seated with dachshund, I told my parents
what circumstances shifted me into trauma
nineteen years after. Their recollections dust-
panned. Why revamp the broom? If this were
a Hadean casino, our skeletons would be shooting
craps, pollen jaundicing the slots. Italians pronounce
Beatrice Be-a-tree-chey. My mother’s bathrobe, colors
of the Vatican City guard. Memory, belittled beetle litter.

Listening to Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major I rosin horsehairs who wish they were a B-movie shank. Stringendo, the fatted calf of music markings. Igor your pizzicato could crack an ibex hoof. Has afterlife been geranium rosette? Con sordino, the cue for mutes that gloam the sound. Zbornak, a matchbook’s length from tarmac. Auras or airlocks, everything rid with honeycomb and witch’s hat at 40,000 feet. OCD an eternity a pagan flightpath. At ailment you’ll throw any

interstate windfarm,
proximity golden
to nimble smithereens.




Jon Riccio is a PhD graduate from the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. Recent work appears in decomP, Gris-Gris, Inverted Syntax, and The Ocean State Review, among others. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page